National Geographic (blogs) » Voices for Biodiversityhttp://voices.nationalgeographic.com
Ideas and Insights From ExplorersSat, 01 Aug 2015 04:01:45 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.3With the 2014 Climate Summit behind us, environmentalists ponder: what about our forests?http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/09/26/with-the-2014-climate-summit-behind-us-environmentalists-ponder-what-about-our-forests/
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/09/26/with-the-2014-climate-summit-behind-us-environmentalists-ponder-what-about-our-forests/#commentsFri, 26 Sep 2014 13:05:36 +0000http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/?p=146305I am an optimist. I celebrate the rescue of even a single pangolin despite knowing the species is critically endangered and that the odds of their continued existence are poor. When I undertake a tree planting in Borneo, I will celebrate the planting of a mere few dozen critically endangered tree species, Shorea belangeran, even though it feels like the proverbial spitting of peas at the massive tank that is extinction.

That should have me pumping my fists in the air with the announcements this week at the United Nations Climate Summit 2014 in New York City. Signed by governments, non-profit groups and multinational corporations, the grand paper “New York Declaration on Forests Action Statements and Action Plans” – one of the seminal declarations to come out of the Summit – has been celebrated in too many news media sources to link here. But the key parts of the agreement are simply:

A global timeline to cut natural forest loss in half by 2020 and strive to end it by 2030.

The restoration of forests and croplands of an area larger than India (approximately 350 million hectares).

This reminds me of the much ballyhooed Kyoto Protocol, which was similarly celebrated worldwide when it was announced. Yet that initiative died a miserable death in 2012 when it failed utterly and completely. While aiming for a 5 percent reduction in carbon emissions, the final results saw a 58 percent increase instead.

Yet why should I celebrate yet another grandiose announcement in the face of a long legacy of lavish policy disappointments?

While I have not yet gone through the whole list of signatories on the New York declaration, it does warrant a realistic look at what we know is likely to happen to forests globally from now till 2020.

Bolivia, which has already cleared a few million hectares in the past decade, wants to triple its food production, requiring an additional 7.78 million hectares of farmland (largely cleared from biologically rich forests). Dr. Robert Müller, a biologist from the Institute of Geography in Georg August Universität in Göttingen, Germany, insists simply that “No land without forest is available anymore.“

Peru did sign a deal with Germany and Norway at the New York Summit to protect its forests with cash contributions, but will this be the same sort of deal Indonesia signed with Norway? Forest loss remains high in the Southeast Asian country despite the moratorium on deforestation that was part of the agreement. And Peru recently has made some drastic changes to its official policies on its forests (to the aim of additional development and less protection), and one has to wonder if the offer of a few hundred million dollars will be enough for it to do an about turn.

Forests elsewhere on the planet face a similar onslaught of massive industrial plantations for, among other activities, palm oil and cattle ranching. And 2020 seems to be a buzz year in the world of deforestation politics.

In Southeast Asia, two of the world’s biggest palm oil producing countries have ambitions rivaling that of Liberia for the year 2020.

Indonesia has repeatedly said it will create another 14 million hectares of palm oil plantations by 2020 in order to meet its targeted production. Not all 14 million hectares will be virgin forests, however; the World Resources Institute has indicated that there are millions of hectares of already degraded lands that are suitable for palm oil expansion. But forests make up the bulk of the land up for development.

Malaysia has also set the year 2020 as the target date to double its palm oil production. Much smaller in area than its sprawling neighbor, it’s hoping that more efficient methods of cultivation and processing will allow it to reach its target while limiting destruction of valuable forest land. Still, the Malaysian state of Sarawak has indicated it wants to plant an additional 800,000 hectares in their small state alone.

Watching the palm-oil-fueled economic boom in its Southeast Asian neighbours, the environment secretary of the Philippines, Ramon Paje, announced plans this year to plant 8 million hectares of palm oil on what he calls “degraded lands.” Opposition to these massive plans, however, show that it is impacting priceless biodiversity hotspots like the province of Palawan.

I do recognize the needs of developing nations to improve their standards of living (sometime at the cost of native forests), but it makes no sense to celebrate the New York declaration when it seems to be doing nothing more than stating the obvious. By 2020, there could be fewer than half our current forests still remaining as countries rush to make their quotas before deforestation bans and environmental agreements kick in. Any remaining forests after the 2020 cut-off date could disappear, as well, in the following decade. It’s easy to cut your rate of deforestation when there are no more trees left to cut down. And that is no cause for celebration.

–Robert Hii, Contributor, Voices for Biodiversity

Do you have a story to share about how you’re helping save the world? Do you want to tell YOUR story about biodiversity and what it means to you? If you’re interested in connecting the human animal to the global ecosystem, submit content to Voices for Biodiversity by emailing ManagingEditor@izilwane.org!

]]>http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/09/26/with-the-2014-climate-summit-behind-us-environmentalists-ponder-what-about-our-forests/feed/1Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil: future fact or farce?http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/01/28/indonesian-sustainable-palm-oil-future-fact-or-farce/
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/01/28/indonesian-sustainable-palm-oil-future-fact-or-farce/#commentsTue, 28 Jan 2014 13:17:40 +0000http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/?p=122821The year 2013 was a pretty good one for the last remaining patches of old forests in the world.

Monstrous, forest-chomping companies like Asia Pulp and Paper and their relatives in the palm oil industry, Golden Agri Resources, both made pledges to adopt zero deforestation policies in their work. Even Wilmar Group, previously criticised widely as the worst corporation for transparency, made a similar pledge, as all three companies signed up with The Forest Trust to improve their approach to sustainable environmental management.

Photo courtesy of Caroline Braker.

That’s what made 2013 a good year for forests, but it begs the question, what are the members of the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) waiting for? If these three multi-nationals can pledge to not remove important forests that are such a vital part of humanity’s well being, what is holding back the stakeholders in CGF from making the same commitment right now?

According to their own website, the CGF reads is:

“… a global, parity-based industry network, driven by its members. It brings together the CEOs and senior management of over 400 retailers, manufacturers, service providers and other stakeholders across 70 countries and reflects the diversity of the industry in geography, size, product category and format. Forum member companies have combined sales of EUR 2.5 trillion. Their retailer and manufacturer members directly employ nearly 10 million people with a further 90 million related jobs estimated along the value chain.”

If we could add that EUR 2.5 trillion to this $270 billion incentive that is being offered by institutional investors across the globe to companies that have anything to do with palm oil, that would be one awesome tool that could stop the chainsaws today. In 2014.

Unfortunately, that is not going to happen. While that $270 billion incentive is active and in place to reward or punish companies that have anything to do with unsustainable palm oil, the Consumer Goods Forum, through its members, are pledging to halt net deforestation not until the year 2020, which could be too late.

It is easy to see how they could potentially have zero-net-deforestation products on market shelves by 2020. If you look at historical data on the loss of forest coverage, like this one from Earth Policy Institute, there simply won’t be any forests left to deforest by then.

What disturbs me most, though, is that the pledge to use 2020 as the cut-off year for deforestation-free consumer products has been picked up by palm oil producing countries like Indonesia. Dissatisfied with membership of the globally accepted certification scheme for palm oil known as the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the Indonesian Palm Oil Association quit the organization to form their own scheme for sustainable palm oil under the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO).

On the surface, the ISPO looks really good. Where the RSPO failed to make big impacts in the protection of key forests in Indonesia due to the fact that many Indonesian producers of palm oil are not members, the ISPO has said it will make all its standards, its Principles and Criteria, mandatory to all producers of palm oil in the country. But all of this only by 2020.

We’re only in early 2014, and already the claims of land grabs by palm oil and timber plantations in Indonesia are echoing through local Indonesian media. With only seven working years left to the year 2020, I fully expect a mad rush by companies to work pell-mell to cut down whatever forests they have been awarded regardless of human rights, extinctions of wildlife, or greenhouse gas emissions. I bring you one fine example of this today.

Photo courtesy of Robert Hii.

Local communities in Sulawesi, Indonesia, are going through a typical situation that has played out many times over at the hands of large corporations. Not only do they stand to lose their livelihoods planting rice or rubber, but they stand to lose the rights to their own land through nefarious purchasing practices or outright disregard for the law. Big Agriculture buys up the land and then requires the former residents, owners, and workers—who often have no other place to go—to remain tied to the plantations. Their children will then be born into debt to the same companies that promised them wealth and development.

Our challenge to the ISPO should be to implement with immediate effect a complaints system whereby allegations of land grabs or removal of high conservation values can be noted even as the ISPO works toward certifying palm oil producers in Indonesia. Failure to do so could permanently challenge the credibility of ISPO if they choose to certify plantations with a history of social and environmental injustices.

China and India are the biggest buyers of palm oil, and why should they listen to us? There are a couple of reasons. Aggressive campaigns by Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network to stop unsustainable palm oil growth have had an effect on the likes of Kellogg or Unilever. These brands felt the pressure from movement such as this one that Voices for Biodiversity has helped perpetuate, and these companies are working in the background to make sure no forests fall or human rights trampled for the sake of products they sell us.

Unfortunately, palm oil companies have seen the future in eco-friendly fuels or biofuels and what American companies will do to produce it. While we may rage against the deforestation caused by new palm oil plantations, they know that when we see the millions of hectares of forests being cut down in the Americas to feed biomass energy production like Drax in the United Kingdom, we will quickly forget the devastation in Borneo or Sumatra and simply beg to save our own forests in the West.

And why should we care about what some palm oil companies are doing in Indonesia? If saving cute orangutans or social justice doesn’t make you get up and go, hopefully climate change will.

According to The Conversation, “Indonesia’s peatlands hold at least 57 billion gigatonnes (Gigatonnes or Gt) of carbon, making them a globally significant terrestrial carbon pool.” The Union of Concerned Scientists has long warned about green house gas emissions from palm oil cultivation and is urging companies to adopt strong policies on peat free sourcing.

Without governance over the millions of hectares that could potentially open up in Indonesia between now and 2020, we could likely see the time bomb go off and contribute to many more dire situations like the one California is in now. We simply cannot afford to ignore significant contributors to global warming and climate change, especially one of this magnitude.

Getting the ISPO to set up a complaints system today might not stop the destruction of high conservation value forests or protect human rights, but if the system is in place, it will, at the very least, give us a chance to gauge whether ISPO certification will be fact or farce.

Photos are copyright protected and may not be reproduced without permission.

— Robert Hii, Sustainable Business Consultant

Do you have a story to share about how you’re helping save the world? Do you want to tell YOUR story about biodiversity and what it means to you? If you’re interested in connecting the human animal to the global ecosystem, submit content to Izilwane: Voices for Biodiversity.

]]>http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/01/28/indonesian-sustainable-palm-oil-future-fact-or-farce/feed/1Marching to Save the Elephant on October 4http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/26/marching-to-save-the-elephant-on-october-4/
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/26/marching-to-save-the-elephant-on-october-4/#commentsThu, 26 Sep 2013 16:05:26 +0000http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/?p=109563“Whoever has seen these giants marching across the last free open spaces of the world knows that this is something that must not be lost.”
— Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

Several years ago, Marie and I began to mourn the tragic dismembering of elephant society across Africa, an act that caused us to cry for the future of the greatest land mammal on earth. As we heard about the rising tide of deaths, elephants wept and mourned for their kind. Elephant society and culture were and continue to be shattered. It was the beginning of the second phase of destruction in contemporary history, the first beginning in the 1980s when 600,000 were annihilated to feed the world’s greed for ivory souvenirs. In 2011 alone, 30,000 elephants were mutilated for trinkets to be sold in the Asian market. The great heart of Africa was being laid waste, not for billiard balls and piano keys as Stanley once wrote, but for toothpicks and statuettes across Asia, with China the main culprit. In 2009, in response to the suffering these great animals were experiencing, we published Walking Thunder – In the Footsteps of the African Elephant by Merrell London, prefaced by the remarkable Dame Daphne Sheldrick, whose compassion for the elephants of Kenya and its orphans is a testament to the best of the human species.

Photo Courtesy of Cyril Christo.

We approached many magazine and news outlets to write about the resurgent poaching issue in 2009 and 2010, but it was Vanity Fair that finally understood the enormous implications of what was occurring across the continent. It took five months of talks, but they finally said they would cover it. In November 2010, they sent the gifted Alex Shoumatoff, who covered the death of Diane Fossey, to Africa to write Agony and Ivory, one of the most scorching and all-encompassing articles on a single species in the history of journalism. In it, Alex mentions the stirrings of an extinction vortex that, like a modern-day Scylla and Carybdis, was swallowing the last great herds of Africa. The article went viral and galvanized the world. National Geographic followed 14 months later with their heart-wrenching cover story Blood Ivory by Bryan Christy, which further galvanized the planet to a reality that has now plunged a stake in the conscience of the world, the slaughter of the innocents. The searing image of a rotting body was a wake-up call to the world that this action and thousands like it hold a mirror to humanity at its most depraved and barbaric. A plethora of other articles and campaigns have since arisen around the world. The planet is now firmly entrenched in Battle for the Elephants, the documentary shown nationally in February and directed by John Heminway. What few realize is that the battle for the elephant is also a battle for the human soul. We walked out of Africa alongside elephants, they helped us find water in times of drought, and their bodies have fed us for countless millennia. We are indebted to the elephant as we are to few, perhaps no, other species in our evolution.

The upcoming International March for Elephants will be held October 4, 2013, across three continents and 13 cities – from London to Rome, from Cape Town to New York, from Nairobi to Toronto, from DC to San Francisco, from Bangkok to Los Angeles, from Paris to Melbourne – and is inspired by the David Sheldrick (husband of Dame Daphne Sheldrick) Wildlife Trust. It is an October revolution for the life force of Earth. It is the first global march for another species in the history of humankind. This global tide of reckoning is a planetary wake-up call for the biosphere. If we cannot save the elephant, what on earth can we save? As The Guardian recognized, animal extinction is the greatest threat to humanity. Last year, John Kerry convened an Ivory and Insecurity meeting in Washington, D.C., addressing the larger ramifications of the ivory trade and its links to terrorism. A few days ago, Hillary Clinton made saving the elephants her new cause. President Obama recently met with the president of Tanzania to discuss the illicit wildlife trade, poaching, and the future of the elephant, and promised $10 million to stop wildlife trafficking, one of the biggest industries in the world. Increased vigilance and anti-poaching units are now responding, but something intangible must also occur in the hearts of those who buy ivory. With a critical mass of conscience on the upsurge, the upcoming march is a plea for sanity, a prayer for continuity, for I believe that when the tide is reversed and the ivory trade is finally eradicated, we will have landed on a new planet and humanity will have taken a step back from its own oblivion. If we do not reverse course, the loss of the elephant will have played a critical role in the fall of the human empire. There will be no turning back.

Photo Courtesy of Cyril Christo.

There are the realities of climate change too titanic to ignore, but the willful eradication of a part of our psyche that sits enthroned like a monument in the mind and soul of humanity cannot be ignored. It was Romain Gary who understood that the elephants were the last individuals. In his masterpiece The Roots of Heaven, he imagined prisoners in concentration camps closing their eyes and thinking of the elephants marching freely in the last open spaces of the world. He imagined them tearing down the barbed wire fences, reinforced concrete, and abject materialism of the camps and stepping over the SS soldiers. For make no mistake, if we were to lose the elephants, the ramifications would be a penal colony on our planet, not just for humanity but for the entire life force. It is why Elie Wiesel told us that to save the elephant “is an urgent moral imperative.” The March for the Elephants is also a march for the sea and the rainforests and the frogs and the lions and tigers and bears. It is a march for what makes life ineffable. This was summarized by a ranger in Tsavo who worked for the orphaned elephants Dame Daphne has worked so tirelessly to rehabilitate. He had lost his grandfather to an elephant years ago and yet was not vindictive. He realized it was an accident and that elephants are losing ancient ancestral migration paths and habitat. In his wonderfully stark, elegant face and camouflage fatigues he turned to us and said, “A world without elephants is like a world without oxygen.”

The upcoming march is a march for sanity. As one Samburu elder once told us, without the elephants and the whales and the other beings of earth, we will lose our minds. If much stiffer penalties, greatly increased jail time and fines for poachers are not enough to reverse course, then consider the curse many tribal people believe is cast on those who kill elephants. They say it is not just another animal, but they are the mind of nature. What we are beholden to is our place on earth before the cybernetic stare overwhelms the biology and life support system of the planet. As some of the largest consumers of ivory, the Chinese must do everything they can to marshal a transformation in the heart of their people for the rhino and elephant, for Chinese children, too, will want to know that these ineffable beings still exist 100 years from now and beyond. The realization that the panda is irreplaceable must now be extended to Africa’s megafauna. In doing so, China and Asia will save face and avoid enormous shame for the remainder of their history. Henry David Thoreau, in his prophetic voice, understood the slaughter of the whales for oil and also the killers of elephants for ivory. He imagined a greater race than ours making buttons and flageolets out of our bones The elephant is one of the greatest ballasts we have on terrestrial ground – ecologically, spiritually, morally and even karmically. Lose the elephant and we execute wonder, for as we learned in Africa, the word pil, elephant in Hebrew, is the root of the verb to wonder.

Photo Courtesy of Cyril Christo.

“On an entirely manmade earth, there can be no room for man either,” wrote Romain Gary. “All that will be left of us are robots.”

Already there are stirrings of a realization in the Orient, stirrings in the minds and hearts, that elephants have to be killed to retrieve their tusks, that tusks do not fall out like milk teeth! How they do not realize the truth is one of the great mysteries of the human condition and illumines the great cultural gap between East and West. Perhaps they are willfully ignorant and choose to ignore the diabolical realities. But there is evidence that with the media campaigns and billboards through International Fund for Animal Welfare, WildAid and other agencies, the Chinese may be finally coming to grips with the grotesque idea that elephants have to have their faces sawed off to get at their teeth. Compared to just a year ago, many more are saying that they don’t want to buy ivory. Maybe the campaigns are starting to impact the great civilization of Lao Tze. The great dijjaga tusker in India who was out of control bowed before the stalwart heart and mind of the Buddha. It is a lesson we should learn before it is too late.

Lose the elephant and you lose a firmament in the imagination of childhood. Lose the elephant and an entire foundation in the moral standing of civilization crumbles. All our human constructs and artifacts would pale before the loss of these titans. With the last elephants still marching on African soil, we may still have reason to walk toward the absolute horizon. The march this October is not only to salvage the elephant, but to salvage what is left of humanity’s humanity. It is a march for sanity. Without the elephants, we become ontological cripples for the rest of our earthly stay. The elephant’s future is our fate and responsibility. Without elephants we won’t have a leg to stand on. Civilization will stand or fall on the back of the African elephant.

— Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson

All images are copyright protected and may not be used without permission. All photos are courtesy of Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson.

Do you have a story to share about how you’re helping save the world? Do you want to tell YOUR story about biodiversity and what it means to you? If you’re interested in connecting the human animal to the global ecosystem, submit content to Izilwane–Voices for Biodiversity!

]]>http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/26/marching-to-save-the-elephant-on-october-4/feed/28In Palm Oil’s Wake: an interview with Robert Hiihttp://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/09/in-palm-oils-wake-an-interview-with-robert-hii/
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/09/in-palm-oils-wake-an-interview-with-robert-hii/#commentsMon, 09 Sep 2013 10:49:32 +0000http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/?p=107200Do you have a story to share about how you’re helping save the world? Do you want to tell YOUR story about biodiversity and what it means to you? If you’re interested in connecting the human animal to the global ecosystem, submit content to Izilwane–Voices for Biodiversity!

We’ve all heard the news about palm oil. Tales of clear cutting and species loss and the relocation of indigenous peoples have graced the pages of Huffington Post Green, the New York Times and Monga Bay. The World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) and other international conservation organizations have been at the forefront of the battle against the unsustainable development of palm plantations. And yet, it seems the science goes ignored and the pleas fall on deaf ears. There are already 8 million acres of land cleared for palm oil plantations in Indonesia and 9 million in Malaysia, and, according to Rainforest Action Network, the Indonesian government is already planning to convert another 44 million acres of pristine rainforest into plantations by 2020. More dramatic is what will be left when they’re finished: According to the United Nations Environment Program, as much as 98 percent of the country’s forests could be gone by 2022.

This is only the beginning. Land grabs, displaced peoples, increased conflict between humans and wildlife, extensive water and soil pollution, endangered species teetering on the brink of extinction. Just recently, the Forest Research Institute Malaysia declared the keruing paya, one of the iconic trees in Malaysia’s rainforests, extinct, the last bastion of their survival wiped out to make room for palm trees.

Since I started reading more about the destructive nature of palm oil, I’ve become more aware of all the products I use in which the oil is a base ingredient. Organic peanut butter, candies, cosmetics, lotions, Girl Scout cookies, processed fast foods, pastries. It’s not just the big corporations – Proctor and Gamble or Unilever – that use palm oil, but also some companies that I didn’t expect: Whole Foods, Starbucks, and Seventh Generation. Our hunger for the product seems boundless.

So I sat down with conservationist and development consultant Robert Hii to talk a little more about the threat our natural world faces from palm oil and what we, as consumers in an increasingly connected and interconnected world, can do about it.

When we met, you mentioned how much has changed since you grew up in Borneo. What are some of your favorite memories from your childhood there?

My favorite memories are all of the jungles. We moved from Kanowit, a city in the state of Sarawak (on the island of Borneo), to Sibu, which was a huge town in comparison. The house we moved into backed onto open peatlands, and I remember hand-fishing for eels, basically sticking my hands into holes hoping to connect with something slimy.

One of my brothers-in-law was a Melanau, some of the oldest settlers in Sarawak, and he used to take me to visit his family, which involved long treks through jungles and up streams filled with all kinds of fish. We drank from those streams – the water clean and cool – and ate “sushi” pulled straight from the waters. I don’t remember ever having to use mosquito repellent.

What brought you back to Borneo, and what had changed?

I was living in Canada, and I received a call from a nephew of mine who was interested in my social media campaigns for forests; he wanted to know if I could help out “back home.” Sarawak is a difficult place in which to get much done as an activist as it’s tightly controlled by a man who has ruled it with an iron fist for years. When I stepped off the plane in Sarawak, I saw a changed, almost empty, landscape. Most of the old forests are gone. The state government, using dubious sources, claims the area is still 80 percent forested, but maps from indigenous groups show 85 percent of the old forests have been disturbed or completely destroyed.

In your advocacy projects, you focus largely on orangutans. Why this great ape? Why make them the poster-species for this campaign?

Orangutans are the most iconic species/victims of “development.” If I have an audience that is more aware of the issues, I bring up the Sumatran rhino, whose numbers are estimated at no more than 200 animals spread between Sumatra and Borneo. But the orangutans, with their human-like features and intelligent, big brown eyes, appeal to a wider audience, one that may not understand or be familiar with the often complex science of conservation. Or perhaps it’s because there is actually hope to save the species, whereas the extinction of the Sumatran rhino is now inevitable. People like to see hope rather than doom. If we act now, if we stymie the destruction of their habitat, we can save the orangutan.

Palm oil plantations are set up as monoculture farms, and monoculture anywhere has the same impact as industrial palm oil plantations: You lose most of the biodiversity that can only be found in ancient forests. The palm oil-producing countries like to talk up how the plantations are capable of being a carbon filter and all, but what most people don’t realize is that everything is interconnected. From the endemic plants found in ancient forests that feed insects and birds all the way up to nurturing jungle peoples, it’s a nearly perfect system that has worked for thousands of years. And once that’s gone, it’s gone. That biodiversity never comes back, and the loss affects every aspect of life on the planet. We’re even seeing lowered levels of immune systems in humans in the Western hemisphere because we have changed the ecosystems in Southeast Asia.

So how do these plantations, then, affect orangutan populations specifically?

Orangutan populations have free fallen in the past 20 years; estimates put the loss at 50 percent in that time. However, these are all estimates and I would be careful interpreting them. For one, no precise counts were done in the days “before we started caring,” and even now, the estimates we get are based on spot studies in which scientists focus on only small sample areas. Many estimates I see put the Borneo orangutan at between 40,000 to 55,000. That’s a huge discrepancy. Sumatran orangutans are estimated at 6000-7000, but even those numbers are questionable. If you looked at averages between actual loss of habitat and estimated population loss, the numbers of orangutans left would be much, much lower. The worst news is that the two countries in which they are found are hell bound on increasing their acreage of palm oil plantations. I personally find the pledges made at the Consumer Goods Forum on the issue of deforestation-free goods by 2020 as a death sentence for orangutans. We’re going to see a major expansion of plantations in the next few years as palm oil producers and their customers rush to develop as much land as possible before this deadline. After that, of course their products will be deforestation free because there will be no more forests left.

World Orangutan Day was August 19, and was a wild success, especially for its first year. What inspired World Orangutan Day, and what do you hope it accomplished?

World Orangutan Day (WOD) came about from a casual discussion with U.K. teenager Abbie Barnes and U.S. teen Jason DeGrauwe. We had all felt the frustrations with the impending doom of the orangutans and the foot dragging by Western companies to work sustainably. We also shared the frustration felt by rescue groups on the ground. Aceh, in the northern tip of Sumatra, announced a plan to turn much of its protected forests into development zones. The area is home to the last remaining viable populations of the Sumatran orangutan, and this development would effectively kill most of the population there. The Borneo subspecies faces a similar grim future as the governments continue to push for development. We thought it was time to spread the word.

But aren’t orangutans a protected species in both Malaysia and Indonesia?

Yes, they are. At least, on paper. However, I am involved in situations that show how useless this paper protection is.

Case one: high conservation value (HCV) area in Balikpapan Bay in Borneo. Wilmar group started forest clearing in this HCV area in 2007, and when the protests started, the government changed the zoning from protected to development. This isn’t an isolated incident, either.

Case two: the numerous mammalian subspecies unique to Sabah in north Borneo. There is a series of strong regulations behind the protection of riparian forests, on which elephants, orangutans and clouded leopards depend for survival. But there is zero enforcement of this rule. None. They are being grabbed up and developed my private companies all the time. I am currently running after the government departments that are supposed to be enforcing these rules, and so far, no one has responded to my inquiries and accusations.

Case three: The government of Central Kalimantan has issued licenses for palm oil plantation and mining development for more land than it actually owns.

What do these instances tell you?

So in your current campaign, you’re focusing on larger companies, such as Unilever, that purchase palm oil from plantations that use these unsustainable practices. Why Unilever? What kinds of steps could they take?

Unilever is one of the biggest users of palm oil in the world. Because they use more than 1.4 million tons, they have the opportunity to demonstrate true leadership, rather than merely talk the talk, and yet they continue to refuse to step up. For example, they are currently spending more than $100 million to create a refinery in Indonesia so they “can trace their palm oil” from plantation to plate. This might sound like a great thing to do, but how will this oil satisfy their production chains in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and Australia (the largest consumers of palm oil), and how will this actually help stem the production of unsustainable palm oil?

Why create the wheel when it’s already there? The Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil’s (RSPO) online directory clearly shows numerous available sources for segregated (sustainable) palm oil; even in Malaysia and Indonesia segregated product is widely available. So why the brand new refinery? Why waste the resources and necessitate more rainforest loss when those sources are already there? I see it as more profit taking. Why fork out an extra $500 million in profits when you can greenwash your use of palm with a mere $5 million? Note: sustainable palm oil certification can be bought for $3 per ton, while actual physical product costs $50 more per ton.

You’re also targeting smaller, “green” companies, like Seventh Generation and Earth Balance, but are staying away from many of the current campaigns against companies like Starbucks. Can you tell me why?

Starbucks is a relatively small user of palm oil. It would make a great statement if they stood up and actually dropped the use of palm oil or switched to a different vegetable oil, but it might cause a drop in their sales of pastries, as palm oil gives a creamy texture that none of the other veggie oils can do at room temperature.

On the other hand, Seventh Generation on its own website talks about how they are doing things so that seven generations of humans can live in harmony with nature. To me, this is an insult to the Iroquois, who are credited with making that statement. Seventh Gen talks up a great game with their support of awareness programs, but at the same time, they continue to use a product that will see a great many of the planet’s ancient forests destroyed in less than one generation if nothing is done.

Similarly, Earth Balance portrays itself as a an eco-friendly brand, and as I have challenged, there will be no balance on earth if brands like Earth Balance do not make a 100 percent commitment to sustainability. They buy 30 percent of their palm oil from South America and the rest from West Malaysia, where they claim no orangutans are found; all so they can claim to be free of the blame for orangutan deaths. But in the six years that I have campaigned on palm oil, I have not found one single source of palm oil that could declare itself to be 100 percent from west Malaysia or any other specific source. Even giant Unilever acknowledges that the supply chains are complex and that there is no way their massive purchasing power could effectively be traced back to a specific plantation or even region; so how did Earth Balance achieve this? I find the claim dubious, at best.

With so many environmentally destructive business practices out there, why have you chosen palm oil over other environmental concerns?

Palm oil ranks a close second after tar sands oil in terms of carbon emissions. We have millions of Americans and Canadians picketing and protesting tar sands oil pipelines, but meanwhile, we go home and recharge with food and body lotions made with conventional palm oil.

What, then, makes palm oil more significant and more damaging than other products?

It’s unfortunate that the Malaysian and Indonesian governments are the caretakers of two of the richest, most biodiverse countries in the world. We are guilty in the West of having destroyed ecosystems ourselves, and for that, we are willing to pay these countries handsomely in REDD (UN Program on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) programs to have them spare the forests so that we as a whole planet may have a chance to stall climate change. These governments, however, have refused to participate in REDD programs in general. I’m not quite sure what their reasons are, and the only thing I can think of is that REDD does not provide the type of quick income that palm oil does.

What about soy?

True, soy bean oil is equally damaging to the planet as a whole, but at least we see significant efforts being put in place by, for example, Brazil — one of the biggest producers of soy products — to reduce its impact on the planet. Because of popular press and the efforts of international conservationists, suppliers of soy are making valiant attempts to make their products sustainable. We are not seeing this out of Malaysia or Indonesia at all.

Why do governments and companies continue to support palm oil plantation development?

Governments have always used the betterment of livelihoods of poor jungle peoples and small holders as a reason for driving more palm oil plantations. I challenge both governments [of Malaysia and Indonesia] to show me where and how. I have personally seen situations in which landowners are promised good income, roads, hospitals, and schools in exchange for their land rights and properties. Unfortunately, I see more complaints about how few of these promises have materialized. These indigenous peoples and local farmers are seeing none of the benefits, and their rights to farm or otherwise use the land are being stripped away. There are multiple communities in both Malaysia and Indonesia that are fighting to have these promises kept.

The unfortunate part is that there are a lot of communities that look at short term gains — money for a motorcycle, a couple of gas generators, etc. Many people will trade in their futures for this short term gain, and it’s difficult to tempt them with long term goals, such as future employment or environmental protection.

Because you mentioned local and indigenous peoples, can you tell me a little more about how palm oil affects indigenous communities?

I can pull Yosef Manik, a PhD student at the University of Maine, into a wider discussion on this, but from what I have seen in Sarawak and Kalimantan, it’s been about the loss of livelihoods. In an active case in West Kalimantan, for example, I see typical cases in which the son sold the land rights without his father’s knowledge, which resulted in an exploitative land grab. In Central Kalimantan, farmers and indigenous land owners have been promised better futures if they join companies as plasma plantations, in which they get to work their acreage under the control of big plantations. For the most part, they end up being indebted to the big companies, not only for themselves but for their children, as well.

What do you think about Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification?

It was a very weak scheme to begin with, full of loopholes, and it is being taken advantage of by Western brands who think that by pleading to be members of the RSPO or by buying from members of the RSPO, everything is okay. I see cases of RSPO members being accused of land grabs, removing HCV forests, etc. Recently, the RSPO has ramped up the enforcement of their rules, but much still needs to be done.

So what really makes a “sustainably-sourced” palm oil?

Sustainable palm oil can be made with a few simple principles. 1) Reduce the carbon emissions, especially from Land Use Change. 2) Respect the rights of peoples and their land titles and stop using surreptitious tactics to acquire land and land rights. 3) Respect HCV forests and the wildlife and biodiversity found in them. 4) Respect water quality. Oceans and rivers know no boundaries. Agro chemicals used in agriculture kill off marine and aquatic life.

What are your next steps in the campaign?

Immediate step is to continue to drive World Orangutan Day and raise awareness along the way. We’ve tried to do this without using much of the pictorial horrors that have influenced the strong EU and Australian awareness. A key next step is to urge legislative action. The United Kingdom has made a strong statement against conventional palm oil, and I believe the United States, especially California as the 9th largest economy in the world, should issue similar policies. I’ll be working toward that goal.

What can we, as consumers, do to help?

Spread the message to your supporters, engage whatever tools and connections you have available, especially for legislative change. Educate yourself and sign petitions to help tell friends and family. Get your voice out there and let people and companies know where you stand and that you are not alone!

Photos are copyright protected and may not be used without permission. All photos are courtesy of Caroline Braker.

— Kathryn Pardo, Managing Editor, Izilwane–Voices for Biodiversity

]]>http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/09/in-palm-oils-wake-an-interview-with-robert-hii/feed/2How Starbucks Can Save Orangutans TODAYhttp://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/28/how-starbucks-can-save-orangutans-today/
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/28/how-starbucks-can-save-orangutans-today/#commentsWed, 28 Aug 2013 20:43:49 +0000http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/?p=106236Do you have a story to share about how you’re helping save the world? Do you want to tell YOUR story about biodiversity and what it means to you? If you’re interested in connecting the human animal to the global ecosystem, submit content to Izilwane: Voices for Biodiversity!

Back in February this year, I came across this interesting blog by the Orangutan Republik Foundation asking if Starbucks was killing orangutans unintentionally by using palm oil in their food items. It was a sensational title and an association that should make even the cleanest of brands cringe at the association between their products and orangutan deaths. Orangutans are the only great apes found outside of Africa, and their plummeting numbers are usually associated with the loss of their habitats due to palm oil plantations.

So I poked around with a few friends on the issue and lo and behold! There was an investor’s resolution requesting that Starbucks create a policy on their use of palm. The resolution itself acknowledged the devastation behind palm oil and the possible backlash from customers. It should be noted here that shareholders only issue a resolution as a last resort when the company has refused to listen to their concerns.

It was great stuff, but we were very concerned with the possibility of Starbucks using Greenpalm certificates to green-wash their use of palm oil, so we created a protest against Starbucks.

Our demands from Starbucks were quite simple: Create a policy on their use of palm oil, find a source of untainted palm oil (meaning a quality that is, without a doubt, free from orangutan deaths) or drop the use of palm oil entirely. They definitely did not include using paper offsets (payoffs) to justify their use of palm oil.

Image courtesy of International Animal Rescue and Robert Hii.

We won, partially; Green Century Funds, one of their primary investors, acknowledged the problems with the paper offsets and, to much ballyhoo, the news of Starbucks’ commitment to use 100 percent sustainable palm oil by 2015 was celebrated.

I’m a reasonable person. I know there’s no clear winner in the whole vege-oil arguments of what’s better, palm oil or soy or any other alternatives, so I usually call for the use of sustainable palm oil and not a straight out boycott. Most choices are equally bad in terms of messing up the natural environment, but that’s a whole different discussion. In Starbucks’ case though, having them stick a canned statement like, “We buy from the members of the RSPO” was really disappointing. No tangible policy has been created up till now.

Let me give you a short list of current complaints against RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) members, and you tell me if it gives you any confidence in a statement like, “We buy from members of the RSPO.”

Goodhope Holdings Ltd., a Singapor- based company that trades on the Singapore stock exchange was accused of land grabs in West Kalimantan and ignoring the rights of the indigenous peoples to Free and Prior Informed Consent (FPIC), a major standard for the RSPO. This article refers to the area. While the allegations of child labor have been refuted by the company, the indigenous demands to have their rights acknowledged continues to be ignored.

Bumitama Group, another Singapore based member of the RSPO, accused by International Animal Rescue of endangering orangutans in West Ketapang by removing their habitat, has been ordered by the RSPO to remediate all violations by December 2013.

The same company, Bumitama Group, is also accused of removing orangutan habitats and has been charged by the RSPO in a second case.

On a developing third count, Bumitama Group is being accused of pushing for the development of Tanjung Puting National Park, one of the last remaining bastions for orangutans, for more palm oil plantations. This push to create plantations inside protected forests is a huge no-no for RSPO members, and yet here it is.

There are many other active complaints against members of the RSPO; simply too many to list here.

By not using a product that can be traced back to a verified sustainable plantation, Starbucks continues to take a chance that their pastries could be tainted with human rights abuses and wildlife cruelty.

How can this be when its certified by the RSPO? The RSPO has a great set of standards for its members to work by, but unfortunately, their members can pick and choose what standards to work with, if any at all. Its been a constant criticism of the RSPO by environmentalists that the RSPO is a mere green-wash for companies that use palm oil.

This weeks-old baby was found dead this month in the proximity of an RSPO member’s plantation. The plantation has refuted that it died there, arguing that orangutans, being wild animals, do wander in search of food. That would be a convincing argument if the discovery of buried orangutan skeletons on another one of their plantations was not made this month. Orangutans do not bury their dead, and this was an obvious case of orangutan deaths being covered up. Who killed and buried them? What happened to the dead baby’s momma? Is anyone investigating? Do we really want questions like these hanging around when we’re trying to have breakfast?

So what does all this human rights abuses and orangutans have to do with Starbucks?

Starbucks uses palm oil and palm kernel oil in their pastries. It’s what makes everything taste so creamy and yummy at room temperatures.

Most palm oil users will plead that the supply chains involved in palm oil and its derivatives are a complex one (you can get an idea of it here). A simplified version of this was seen personally last week in a case where certified sustainable palm oil from Malaysia was shipped to Korea to be refined — along with oild from a variety of sources — into further fractions of oil before it was shipped to Australia. Did the Korean refiner make sure only certified palm oil was used? In this expose of illegal palm oil plantations inside the Tesso Nilo National Park in Sumatra, RSPO member Wilmar Group was fingered for buying palm oil from plantations that threaten the habitat of the critically endangered Sumatran tiger and elephant. Wilmar Group is no mom and pop operation. They are one of the biggest producers of palm oil globally, and if they could not control the source of their raw materials, then how are we supposed to accept a simple statement like, “We buy from members of the RSPO?”

There are clear and transparent solutions available right now for Starbucks to buy into if the will was there. I should make it clear here that not all RSPO members are useless. One producer of sustainable palm oil that I like is New Britain Palm Oil, which has led the way to sustainable palm oil despite being inadequately compensated on the stock market for their efforts. A sampling of their corporate leadership in this simple statement that bubbles over with overtones of frustration:

“Without sustainability being at the core of our business we would not have been able to differentiate our oil. Without the dedicated refinery capacity in Europe we would not be able to deliver the benefits of that sustainability. We now have a supply chain model that directly links European food companies with the people that grow the crop. Our integration brings us closer to the end user, and we can now engage in a discussion about the needs of the food industry and what we can do to improve the quality and characteristics of our palm oil, so that it can be tailored to their needs. This is a remarkably simple concept, but one that has been absent in the palm oil industry for 50 years, due to the fragmented supply chain.”

Unfortunately for us in the non-EU countries, New Britain won’t be supplying any of our brands any time soon because we, as consumers, have simply not demanded better palm oil in our products.

I realize most of us have more pressing things to worry about than whether there’s cruelty in our foods, but I hope enough people will find a few minutes to speak up. Our collective silence is cruelty committed.

Will Starbucks listen to us if we speak up? I think they will. Public outcries over their tax avoidance in the United Kingdom got them responding quickly. The protests against their use of parasitic beetles to color their strawberry smoothies got that yucky ingredient dropped real quick.

Palm oil is a tiny fraction of the ingredients that Starbucks uses. That makes the options for them simple: They can choose to pay the premiums for untainted palm oil or they can drop its use totally. If a few hundred people would care enough to ask Starbucks to remove the question of whether orangutans died for their pastries, they might just listen and remove that doubt promptly, as well.

Starbucks may be a small user of palm oil, but they have a massive reach. Imagine if all 17,572 of their stores in 55 countries worldwide posted a palm oil free sign to protest against palm oil destruction? That noise would resonate so loud that their competitors, including Dunkin’ Donuts and Tim Hortons, which also use palm oil in their donuts, would have no choice but to follow their lead.

Tell Starbucks to save orangutans today. Send them a message! Whether its a phone call, an email, a post on their facebook page, or signing this petition spearheaded by primatologist Paula Pebsworth, your voice makes a difference. Let them know we want to enjoy their pastries with clean consciences.

— Robert Hii, conservationist and development consultant

]]>http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/28/how-starbucks-can-save-orangutans-today/feed/4It’s Not All Bad: Americans and Palm Oilhttp://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/12/its-not-all-bad-americans-and-palm-oil/
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/12/its-not-all-bad-americans-and-palm-oil/#commentsMon, 12 Aug 2013 12:23:19 +0000http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/?p=103867Climate change and its impact on Americans

Your family carefully sorts your trash and composts table scraps weekly and tries really hard to remember to bring cloth or canvas bags to the grocery store. Some of us drive hybrid cars and support wind power, while others ride a bike to work because they want to reduce their carbon footprint.

We do all of this because we want our children and grandchildren to live on a healthy planet. Going through these inconveniences makes us confident that we are doing all the right things and proud of the message we’re sending our kids. That could be the reason for millions of Americans to feel confused and angry when we feel the full impact of global warming and rising sea levels in the next few years.

Those of us who have had the luxury of time and who have been paying attention have done everything we can to stall the steady rise of earth’s temperature, but many of us remain unaware that we all support one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. President Obama said that climate change is one of the greatest threats facing the world and said, “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.”

But who would have thought that one of the greatest causes of carbon emission is something found in most rooms of our homes? Who would have thought that one of the greatest threats to our well being comes from an Indonesian rainforest? Most Americans can’t even locate Indonesia on a map, and yet about 15 percent of global carbon pollution comes from deforestation – more than the emissions produced from all the cars, buses, trains and airplanes in the world.

It feels as if we are asleep at the wheel, and but sadly we have slept through the alarm, and it is long past the time for America to wake up.

Photo Courtesy of Caroline Braker.

What the heck is Palm Oil?

The oil of palm is a highly versatile, high-yield vegetable oil that is widely used in products, including baked goods, breakfast cereals, cosmetics, personal care and cleaning products; in fact, 51 percent of everything in American stores contains it. It is obtained from the fruit of the oil palm tree and is the most consumed edible oil today. Because of its versatility, the demand worldwide has tripled over the last few decades.

So what is the problem with palm oil?

The problem with palm oil is the way in which it is farmed and manufactured. Current estimates indicate 90 percent of the rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia will be replaced by palm oil plantations unless drastic action is taken to find ways of producing it sustainably.

The production of palm oil has given rise to deforestation, plant and animal extinctions, child labor, and land grabs. This led to the creation of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in 2003 to address these big issues head on. The RSPO was an initiative of the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), who recognized the need to address some of the larger problems with palm oil.

The standards for sustainable palm oil at the RSPO were set very high. In fact, if applied fully, it could make palm oil one of the most eco-friendly options for vegetable oils in the world. The problem, however, is that the standards are not mandatory for their members. This has led to mass confusion of which RSPO members are working sustainably and which are merely using it to divert criticism.

Environmental groups – including its own founder, the WWF – have declared it a failure, and the WWF went on to join a new certification body, the Palm Oil Innovation Group, in 2013.

Photo Courtesy of Caroline Braker.

What can Americans do then?

We, as Americans with the ability to make an impact – negatively or positively – on palm oil production policies, must make a statement against palm oil that is causing so much global warming. I have created a petition asking Senate to introduce legislation to stop the imports of conventional palm oil – the cause of all that green house gas emissions.

We will not ask for an outright ban, as we understand the jobs of many poor workers in Indonesia and Malaysia depend on palm oil production. We must, however, exercise our own rights for a healthy future for our children and tell these palm oil companies in clear terms that we will not let polluting products to cross our border.

The United Kingdom has created a policy on palm oil use as a government, and this has led to palm oil companies scrambling to lighten their environmental impact. The European Union has made it mandatory to label clearly all products containing palm oil. The expectation there is that any product with palm oil will suffer a drop in sales as Europeans are more aware of the destruction caused by conventional palm oil.

It’s time America spoke up.

To celebrate the first ever World Orangutan Day on August 19, 2013, I will be hand delivering my petition to my senator, Maria Cantwell (D-WA), to introduce legislation to control the imports of palm oil.

Do you have a story to share about how you’re helping save the world? Do you want to tell YOUR story about biodiversity and what it means to you? If you’re interested in connecting the human animal to the global ecosystem, submit content to Izilwane: Voices for Biodiversity!

]]>http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/12/its-not-all-bad-americans-and-palm-oil/feed/11Consumer groups slam greenwashing in sustainable palm oil marketinghttp://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/08/consumer-groups-slam-greenwashing-in-sustainable-palm-oil-marketing/
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/08/consumer-groups-slam-greenwashing-in-sustainable-palm-oil-marketing/#commentsThu, 08 Aug 2013 12:30:44 +0000http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/?p=103480Consumer groups Palm Oil Investigations of Australia (POI) and Palm Oil Consumers Action (POCA) of the United States issued a joint statement against the green-washing that is prevalent among Western brands that use palm oil in their products.

The problem, as they see it, includes confusing wording and suggestive statements used by companies that try to reassure their customers that the palm supply they use is sustainable. The main issue lies with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) approval of a paper scheme for sustainable palm oil called Greenpalmcertificates.

How to Make a Palm Oil Plantation: Complete Deforestation, photo courtesy of Hayden, Flickr Creative Commons

Greenpalm certificates — a program operated by Book & Claim, UK — was a scheme created when the RSPO was first established in 2004 by member company AarhusKarlshamn Group (AAK) as an option to support the production of sustainable palm oil. At the time, it made sense for palm oil users to buy into the scheme to show their support of sustainable palm oil.

In the eight years since the RSPO was formed, some of its members have taken great strides to work according to the organization’s principles and criteria to produce environmentally-sustainable palm oil. Producers including New Britain Palm Oil (NBPOL), Agropalma, Musim Mas, and Sime Darby have consistently met those standards, which are some of the toughest for vegetable oil production.

Some of the same producers have been quoted in recent months that the usefulness of Greenpalm Certificates is past its time. Nick Thompson, CEO of NBPOL, was especially critical of Greenpalm certificates in a statement made to Palm Oil Consumers Action group:

“Although we understand the theory behind Greenpalm certificate trading, we have always thought that because the associated claim is so weak, the value to any buyer would be correspondingly low and therefore represent too little incentive to the growers. This is exactly what has been happening and they now pretty much represent the price you pay for doing nothing and turning a blind eye! The value of certificates is pathetically low and the fact that such a massive percentage of Greenpalm certificates are being redeemed by a very small number of companies illustrates their lack of franchise in the market.”

Most participants are now realizing that mass balance is a much better way to go in that it allows critical players in a supply chain to understand just how close they are to being fully segregated. This means that when they get close to a tipping point (where the majority of the oil is actually certified sustainable palm oil, or CSPO), then it’s actually much easier for the supply chain to become fully segregated at very low cost. The costs of any segregation, then, really only apply when they have effectively become very small.

By contrast, in the opinions of POI and POCA, rather than encouraging this process, Greenpalm certificates just get in the way of traceable, efficient, and sustainable supply chains evolving. According to these organizations, Greenpalm is now an obstacle to a more sustainable industry rather than an aide.

Multinational brands, however, have been quick to jump on the opportunity to divert criticism with the use of this cheap alternative to physical sustainable palm oil. Costing approximately $3 per ton for palm oil or $20 per ton for palm kernel oil, it’s a cheap marketing alternative to physical sustainable palm oil, which runs at many times that cost depending on the product.

The consumer groups have challenged several brands before on their claims to be “sourcing sustainable palm oil” with the use of Greenpalm certificates.

Corporations including Unilever, Kellogg, and Avon products clearly state on their websites that they are “sourcing sustainable palm oil” through the use of these certificates.

“To me, its green-washing, plain and simple,” said LeAnn Fox from POCA. “ How can they claim to be sourcing sustainable palm oil when Greenpalm’s own website makes it very clear they can only claim to be supporting sustainable palm oil?”

The key difference between what the consumers are seeing and the reality are simply the words supporting and the brands’ use of the word sourcing to replace the former in public communications, which makes their statements look like intentional misinformation meant to confuse consumers.

The confusion can been seen in how American zoos are approaching the palm oil issue. Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, previously very critical of anything to do with palm oil, introduced a new app to identify the best choices for brands using palm oil. Unfortunately, these lists contain mostly brands that use Greenpalm certificates. The Philadelphia Zoo, on the other hand, has been harsh on the certificates in their blog:

“The main issue is that, while companies are paying for the sustainable certificates, they are not actually addressing their own palm oil supply chains or creating a demand for sustainable palm oil that is traceable to the source,” the zoo stated. “We have to be careful that GreenPalm [sic] certificates don’t become a way to relieve companies of accountability.”

Lorinda Jane from POI in Australia added further, “If the RSPO is serious about becoming a credible label for sustainable palm oil, they have to drop Greenpalm certificates, which most consumers consider a greenwash that does not address the serious problems in palm oil production.”

The RSPO would be wise to listen to consumers’ concerns. Uptake of their CSPO product has stagnated at 50 percent, and this has led to discontent among its members.

The Indonesian Palm Oil Association (GAPKI) cancelled its membership with the RSPO in 2011, stating in a thinly veiled criticism of the RSPO’s reputation and credibility that, “the Indonesian palm oil industries can move forward and will have a better image in the eyes of the world” without involvement in the program.

Their counterpart in Malaysia, the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOA), has made similar statements, as rumors whirl around the creation of Malaysia’s own sustainable label under Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) and whether their members would be better off leaving the RSPO, as well.

Outspoken Director of the Malaysian Palm Oil Council Yusof Basiron went a step further by saying, “It’s pointless to produce more palm oil certified by the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) if it could not even gain access into France.”

Even their environmental founder, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), has been critical of what the RSPO actually means today and issued a scathing remark in its appraisal of the RSPO’s certified products: “It is unfortunately no longer possible for producers or users of palm oil to ensure that they are acting responsibly simply by producing or using Certified Sustainable Palm Oil.”

In a move that was widely seen as lack of confidence in the RSPO, the WWF has joined a new group of palm oil producers, Palm Oil Innovation Group, whose members are showing their frustration with the slow progress at the RSPO.

“The matter is quite simple,” said LeAnn Fox from POCA. “If we look at other certification bodies like the organic label or fair trade label, when you buy something that is organic or fairly traded, that’s what it is. No one else has offsets like the RSPO where brands could say we couldn’t find organic product so here’s a conventional one and the offset we bought to make it organic.”

Lorinda Jane from POI Australia states:

“Brands are taking advantage of the cheaper Greenpalm option and using it for long term supply, rather than making the vital switch to certified sustainable palm oil. When brands do not demand CSPO and rely instead on Greenpalm, then palm oil companies are not going to produce it; it’s that simple. Consumers are losing faith: The RSPO name is being used as nothing more than a marketing tool, no one knows if a brand is using certified palm oil or not, and it’s an absolute joke and a mess. RSPO needs to cease endorsing Greenpalm and cut ties if it’s going to gain any kind of credibility for their certification process. The RSPO is currently doing themselves a great disservice, and Australian consumers are wising up to it. We have not come across a single Australian brand that has not used the RSPO name in their palm oil greenwashing statements, yet we have only so far found a handful of brands that are in fact using certified palm oil.”

Do you have a story to share about how you’re helping save the world? Do you want to tell YOUR story about biodiversity and what it means to you? If you’re interested in connecting the human animal to the global ecosystem, submit content to Izilwane: Voices for Biodiversity!

]]>http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/08/consumer-groups-slam-greenwashing-in-sustainable-palm-oil-marketing/feed/26Of Palm Oil and Extinctionhttp://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/31/of-palm-oil-and-extinction/
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/31/of-palm-oil-and-extinction/#commentsWed, 31 Jul 2013 11:55:38 +0000http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/?p=102395You know the old question: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make a noise? I’m not quite sure why that question came to mind when news came out of the extinction of Dipterocarpus coriaceus, or keruing paya, in West Malaysia.

Perhaps because the extinction of an iconic Southeast Asian tree species went almost entirely unnoticed. Wild animals and plants are going extinct without us even knowing.

This very large tree, which could only be found in West Malaysia, Borneo and Sumatra, is now extinct in West Malaysia as of July 2013. The last remaining patch of it was clear cut this month to make way for a new palm oil plantation.

This brings to mind a question that a Malaysian friend of mine likes to ask in Bahasa Melayu, the official language of Malaysia: Bila cukup? Translated, this intense phrase means, “When will it be enough?” Her reference is to the ongoing expansions of palm oil plantations in Malaysia, which is made up of west Malaysia — a peninsula sharing its northern border with Thailand — and east Malaysia, which shares a long border with Indonesia on the island of Borneo.

“Ini Bukan Hutan” — This is Not a Forest

There is growing concern about this development among Malaysian environmentalists, and this blatant removal of a critically endangered plant species created an uproar in their small but vocal community. Suggestions have been made that the government should step in and replant available saplings in the area, but you know what? You may be able to replace the trees, but you will never be able to replace the little things that made up the total ecosystem in that area. Each little detail that was inextricably connected to every other.

This incident will be a black eye against Malaysian palm oil, which has long marketed itself as being more protective of natural treasures and as working sustainably when compared to the Indonesians. Choo Yuen May, the Director General of the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) was recently quoted as saying, “In Malaysia, more than 50 percent of the land is [still] under forest cover. The government there has held a pledge since 1992 to maintain that 50 percent, and plantations are only supposed to expand onto land that had previously been cleared for crops like cocoa or rubber.” While we wait to see if they will issue an official statement on the incident, which has openly discredited their claims on forest canopy in Malaysia, let’s take a look at the state of the rainforests in Malaysia in relation to marketed claims.

“Malaysia has over 56 percent forest cover” is a favorite chant for the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, or MPOC, which oversees the branding and marketing of the country’s palm oil industry. How they got this number is more than a little puzzling, however. Malaysia is composed of a land mass of approximately 329,847 square kilometers. Its much celebrated Central Forest Spine scheme, including the replanting of forest corridors, will only yield 53,000 square kilometers, and that’s if it is fully implemented, which seems unlikely. That brings the total to less than 20 percent forest coverage, assuming all the needed replanting is done against all the odds mentioned in the article.

As for the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo island, the stats aren’t that impressive, either. Recent satellite mappings showed that less than 20 percent of intact forests remain in those two states. The Heart of Borneo plan to preserve the precious biodiversity there has achieved only grand conferences and parties to celebrate its protection and has done little real conservation on the ground.

I tried hard, I really did, and punched the calculator several times to try to achieve a 50 percent target, but the damned calculator wouldn’t compute! I am sure the Malaysian palm oil industry wishes Malaysia wasn’t custodian to one of the most biodiverse lands on earth. Then all eyes would be elsewhere. But other questions remain on how the country can call its collective product “sustainable” when so many of its producers do not work with any sustainable certification of any sort.

To give credit where its due, the Malaysian government and industry is making the right types of noises about sustainable palm oil, and I hope the Central Forest Spine and Heart of Borneo schemes move from mere talk to action. As you’re reading this today, more species are facing extinction in West Malaysia if this new proposal for palm oil plantations goes through. While they work at that, I hope they will take more effective measures to ensure that the keruing paya will be the last thing to go extinct in Malaysia.

— Robert Hii, Sustainable Business Consultant

Do you have a story to share about how you’re helping save the world? Do you want to tell YOUR story about biodiversity and what it means to you? If you’re interested in connecting the human animal to the global ecosystem, submit content to Izilwane: Voices for Biodiversity!

]]>http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/31/of-palm-oil-and-extinction/feed/5America’s Youth Tells Starbucks to Say “No” to Palm Oil!http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/23/americas-youth-tells-starbucks-to-say-no-to-palm-oil/
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/23/americas-youth-tells-starbucks-to-say-no-to-palm-oil/#commentsTue, 23 Jul 2013 12:20:55 +0000http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/?p=101516Did you know that the world’s orangutan population has declined by more than 50 percent since 1992? And did you know that this decline is largely due to loss of habitat, notably for the development of palm oil plantations? Because of our hunger for luxury items like baked goods and cosmetics, the loss of pristine rainforest continues to rise. Even Starbucks, a company known (perhaps surprisingly) for it social activism, continues to purchase oil from unsustainable sources, at the cost of countless plant and animal species. Some companies have said they will change some time in the future, but when will “later” become “too late”?

And if you need more convincing, just listen to these voices from the next generation of conservationists! In this short film, join young Abi and Bryce as they begin their journey to Seattle, Washington, and the headquarters of Starbucks to deliver their message to the coffee king in person: stop using unsustainable palm oil, or we will stop going to your shops. They know a company like Starbucks can do better, and they’re hoping to make an impact on their travels by spreading the word and getting people to sign their petition to celebrate World Orangutan Day on August 19.

This month, in honor of World Orangutan Day, Izilwane–Voices for Biodiversity is joining the campaign against Americans’ hunger for environmentally destructive palm oil. The majority of palm oil production – 80 percent – occurs in Indonesia and Malaysia, where roughly 50 percent of the original forest cover has been replaced with palm oil plantations, leading to the quickest declines in biodiversity anywhere on the globe.

Every hour, an area the size of 300 football fields of rainforest is cleared for the production of oil palms, often in the form of monocropping. Some producers have made significant efforts to move toward sustainable farms, and some companies have switched to sustainable sources; however, World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) says consumers are purchasing only half of the sustainably-produced palm oil being manufactured. With this obvious surplus in goods, why do companies like Starbucks continue to use unsustainable oils in their products, contributing to loss of orangutan and elephant habitat?

As consumers and lovers of coffee, one thing we can do is say “No Thank You” to Starbucks. If you love orangutans and elephants more than pastries, then pass on the pastries until Starbucks changes their recipes to exclude unsustainable palm oil. Decimation of the rainforest is catastrophic for local and indigenous peoples, animals, plants, and, in particular, orangutans and elephants. If you want your voice to be heard, please consider signing this petition asking the coffee giant to make the right choice.

Over 50,000 orangutans have already died as a result of deforestation due to palm oil production in the last two decades. The majority of palm oil production – 80 percent – occurs in Indonesia and Malaysia, where roughly 50 percent of the original forest cover has been replaced with palm oil plantations, leading to the quickest declines in biodiversity anywhere on the globe. Every hour, an area the size of 300 football fields of rainforest is cleared for the production of oil palms, often in the form of monocropping. Some producers have made significant efforts to move toward sustainable farms, and some companies have switched to sustainable sources; however, World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) says consumers are purchasing only half of the sustainably-produced palm oil being manufactured. With this obvious surplus in goods, why is Starbucks continuing to use an unsustainable source in its baked goods, contributing to loss of orangutan and elephant habitat?

As consumers and lovers of coffee, one thing we can do is say “No Thank You” to Starbucks. If you love orangutans and elephants more than pastries, then pass on the pastries until Starbucks changes their recipes to exclude palm oil or at the very least uses a sustainable source. Decimation of the rainforest is catastrophic for local and indigenous peoples, animals, plants, and, in particular, orangutans and elephants. If you want your voice to be heard, please consider signing this petition asking the coffee giant to make the right choice.

An example of the letter to Starbucks’ CEO (which is customizable for those of you who would like to make a more personal note) is as follows:To: Howard Schultz, Starbucks, CEO Vivek Varma, Executive VP, Public Relations Stop selling baked goods containing palm oil! Starbuck’s website states 4 commitments ” 1) helping communities thrive 2) minimizing your environmental footprint 3) offering the highest-quality, ethically purchased and produced products 4) being a good corporate citizen.” By selling products containing palm oil, you’re violating all 4 of these commitments and are not being a responsible company. You can do better – ditch the palm oil or at least start using a sustainable source, which we know is available!